The Ukrainian Government as the Point of Balance between Domestic and Foreign Capital
Last month, Russia began to amass troops close to its border with Ukraine. Kremlin top brass’s media interventions seeking to explain the buildup of around one hundred thousand troops were ambiguous: from reassurances that these were simple military exercises to effective threats of a full-fledged war if Ukraine should join NATO. The demonstrative character of these actions […]
Decades of investment in education have not improved social mobility
John Goldthorpe It is widely believed in political circles, and among the commentariat, that in Britain today social mobility is in decline. This is not, in fact, the case, as a new research programme led by Professor Erzsébet Bukodi of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University shows. But the preoccupation with […]
Forget shorter showers: why personal change does not equal political change
Derrick Jensen is the author of Thought to Exist in the Wild, Songs of the Dead, Endgame, Dreams, and other books. In 2008, he was named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” His Orioncolumn is called “Upping the Stakes.” Would any sane PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or […]
The causes of Ukrainian crisis
On March 11th 2023 our friend and comrade of Commons, known political economist, political scientist, labour movement historian and an activist of left-wing movements and solidarity with Ukraine, Marko Bojcun, passed away. He played an important role in keeping the flame of the Ukrainian left alive and in giving it, through emigrants and dissidents, to […]
Nietzsche and Christ
23 November 2008Trinity College Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God… Whither is God?’, he cried. ‘I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers… God is […]
The origins of the offshore model of Ukrainian economy
Ukraine is one of the top ten countries with the most massive outflow of capital abroad. As the Tax Justice Network estimated, in 1991-2012 only, this sum was $167 billion, which is comparable to the annual GDP of Ukraine [Вєдров, 2013]. Globally, offshores contain sums that are equivalent to 30-45 percent of the global GDP. […]
Peer to peer production as the altarnative to capitalism: a new communist horizont
Jacob Rigi The current crisis of capitalism has provoked protests, revolts and revolutions in major parts of the planet that include 3 billions of inhabitants. Even the mainstream Time Magazine made “The Protester” the person of the year. The caption on Time’s cover reads: From the Arab Spring To Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to […]
In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
In Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s tale the Little Prince meets a businessman who accumulates stars with the sole purpose of being able to buy more stars. The Little Prince is perplexed. He owns only a flower, which he waters every day. Three volcanoes, which he cleans every week. “It is of some use to my […]
Resisting the Corporate University
Few forces are better positioned to fight the corporate university than graduate student workers. Graduate workers are on the front lines in the battle over the neoliberalization of higher education. As both students and workers, they’re doubly targeted: at the same time states and university administrations are raising tuition and fees, they’re cutting wages and […]
Literary Magazines for Socialists Funded by the CIA, Ranked
Patrick Iber In May of 1967, a former CIA officer named Tom Braden published a confession in the Saturday Evening Post under the headline, «I’m glad the CIA is ‘immoral.’». Braden confirmed what journalists had begun to uncover over the previous year or so: The CIA had been responsible for secretly financing a large number of “civil […]
